formula gravity

Next week's Gadget Show (Monday March 21st 8pm on Channel 5) will be featuring a challenge involving a race between a cartie and a Lotus. The cartie, built by Graham Parish Engineering and students from West Suffolk College using components supplied by Formula Gravity, is taking on a Lotus Elise to see who can complete the course in the shortest time. To even things out, the gravity powered racer will be travelling downhill while the petrol powered Lotus will be travelling uphill.

The course is at Saarburgh in Germany. It is very steep and technical, which should even things out and make for a very interesting challenge.

Formula Gravity - the builders of the Gadget Show cartie that narrowly lost to Lotus last year - will be exhibiting at Gadget Show Live at the Birmingham NEC this month. Formula Gravity are one of the most dedicated teams on the scene and compete in soapbox cartie races the length and breadth of the UK, so they will be a familiar sight to many. Make sure you pop along and say hello if you are in the vicinity.

Five's Gadget Show will be doing a piece on soapbox racing later this month. Presenters Ortis and Jason will be driving a cart designed and built by David Ackroyd and Loughborough College, and taking on the current Goodwood Festival of Speed winner and course record holder - the Lotus 119c.

The Lotus took 18 months to design and build, and cost £220,000. David and the Loughborough College students got 4 1/2 days and a budget of £1,500 to build their challenger - the appropriately named "Lotus Eater". You can't buy gravity though, and they both got the same 9.81m/s2, and the result was remarkably close.

So who won? Well you'll just have to watch the Gadget Show on Monday 30th March on Five at 8pm to find out...